Woman pleads guilty to perjury in '08 Hampton sexual assault case

Teen's lie sent Johnathon Montgomery to prison for four years

HAMPTON — A Hampton woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to lying from the witness stand at a Hampton trial five years ago, which led to a man spending nearly four years of his life wrongfully imprisoned.

Elizabeth Paige Coast, 23, had been charged with one count of perjury, accused of lying on the witness stand against Johnathon Montgomery, her grandmother's former neighbor and one of Coast's former childhood playmates.

At the 2008 trial, Coast, who was then 17, swore under oath that Montgomery had sexually assaulted her eight years earlier — when he was 14 and she was 10. Among other things, she claimed that he had forced her to perform oral sex.

But Coast, who had been working as a civilian clerk at the Hampton Police Division in recent years, came forward on Oct. 30 to a friend, Hampton Police Officer James P. Auer, according to a summary of the evidence laid out Tuesday by Hopewell Commonwealth's Attorney Rick Newman.

"She advised him that she had lied," Newman said at the hearing, adding that she told the officer that Montgomery "had never done anything" to her. (Newman is substituting as the case's prosecutor after the Hampton office recused itself).

Auer reported the matter internally with the police department, leading to Hampton police and prosecutors immediately looking further into the matter.

On Nov. 1, Coast provided a written confession to a Hampton Police detective, Kimberly Gardin. That confession was entered as evidence on Tuesday, as was a transcript of Montgomery's 2008 trial.

"I, Elizabeth Coast, lied about Johnathon Montgomery having any type of sexual contact with me," she wrote in the confession. "I stated and even testified that he sexually molested me when he did not. He never touched me in a sexual manner. We were never alone together."

Also in that confession, Coast elaborated as to the reasons she lied at the trial.

"My mother and father caught me looking up inappropriate material (literature) online that was of a sexual nature," and "I was afraid to tell them why."

Coast wrote that "my mom asked if someone had sexually abused me," and whether that had caused her to look up the "inappropriate" literature.

"I decided to tell her 'Yes,' to make it look like it wasn't my fault," she wrote in the confession. "I was afraid of her anger, so I lied."

Coast had previously explained that she picked Montgomery as her attacker because his family had moved away and she thought the police wouldn't be able to track him down. Instead, police tracked him down in Florida and charged him with assaulting Coast.

When pressed by a prosecutor on Nov. 1 how she was able to keep her story straight if it didn't really happen, Coast replied, "I'm a good liar."

"I can keep things straight usually," she said, according to a transcript of that interview. "I came up with a story and I just stuck to that one and I just didn't deviate from it."

Also during that interview, Coast said she decided to tell the truth about what happened after she began attending God's Girls Ministries, a live-in Christian program for women in crisis. She had also been going to a Christian-based psychotherapist.

Based on Coast's trial testimony, Montgomery was convicted of three felony sexual assault charges. He was sentenced to 45 years behind bars — with 7.5 to serve and the remaining 37.5 suspended. If Coast had not come forward last fall to say that she had lied, he would still be in prison.

The Montgomery story became a significant statewide legal drama last fall after the state attorney general's office blocked a Circuit Court judge's order to let him out of prison, saying the judge lacked the authority to release him.

The Daily Press highlighted the case in news stories and heavily pushed on its editorial page for Montgomery's immediate release.

With about two and a half years remaining on his original sentence, Montgomery was finally released from prison days before Thanksgiving under a conditional pardon from Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Coast declined to comment after Tuesday's hearing, with a friend whisking her away in a car. Her attorney, Ron Smith, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Coast entered the guilty plea without a plea agreement. If she had not pleaded guilty, Newman said after the hearing, "I was going to demand a jury trial."

"There was no reason to negotiate a plea agreement," Newman said. "She admitted she did it."

Under the state's felony perjury statute, Coast faces up to 10 years in prison when she's sentenced by Jones on July 22. But Newman said that he had not yet determined how much prison time he would ask for.

Before Montgomery's release several days before Thanksgiving, he told the Daily Press he hoped Coast gets some leniency.